The video game industry is no stranger to controversy, and few titles have stirred the pot as much as Bethesda’s Fallout 76. Launched in 2018, the game was met with a barrage of criticism, from its lack of non-player characters to its myriad of technical issues. Yet, as time has passed, Bethesda has made efforts to regain the trust of its player base – largely successfully.
Starfield’s lead designer, Emil Pagliarulo, took to Twitter to acknowledge the lessons learned from Fallout 76 and express gratitude for the community’s unwavering support.
Our goal from the very beginning was to create a brand new universe for our players (old and new!) to get lost in. To push ourselves to provide you with as much content, and hopefully joy, as we were humanly capable of. Did we pull it off? Well, we sure as hell tried.
When 76 launched rough, we asked for your patience. We had some lessons to learn. And you supported us as we supported that game, and made it the experience you wanted and deserved. That trust clearly carried over into Starfield, and made us want to work ever harder.
The Fallout series, dating back to the late ’90s, has been a beloved staple in the gaming community. With titles like Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4 receiving widespread acclaim, expectations were high for Fallout 76. However, upon its release, the game was met with a wave of negative reviews.
Fallout 76’s always-online feature was a significant point of contention. While the idea of a multiplayer Fallout title was intriguing, the execution left much to be desired. The absence of NPCs made the world feel empty and devoid of the rich storytelling the series was known for. Instead, players were left to wander a desolate, boring landscape, often encountering more bugs than engaging content.
Unsurprisingly, the backlash from the gaming community was swift and severe. On Metacritic, the game currently sits at a 2.8 user score based on 6752 ratings. Interestingly, despite the criticism, there were those who saw potential in Fallout 76. The game’s vast open world and the promise of post-apocalyptic exploration with friends kept some players hopeful for future improvements.
Bethesda took action and began releasing updates to address the game’s technical issues and improve the overall player experience. Luckily, these efforts began to pay off as the game managed to amass over 15 million players as of June this year. This turnaround was not lost on the gaming community, with many players feeling that Bethesda had learned some important lessons from it.
As Bethesda was gearing up to release its highly anticipated space-facing RPG, Starfield, many players approached the game with cautious optimism. Though the gameplay trailers and interviews from the development team hinted at a positive result, a significant number of people decided to embrace the “wait and see” attitude.
Starfield has now been released on both Xbox and PC platforms, and early reviews paint a picture of a well-crafted game that is worthy of praise from even the mightiest of game creators. We can only hope that Bethesda will fix some of the issues that players have brought up now that it seems to have learned from past mistakes.
